A HAWERA COUNTY ASSET.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 27 April 1922, Page 4

A HAWERA COUNTY ASSET.

(To the Editor.)

kir,—ln your journal t«cently a resident of Dives Avenue wrote making some inquiries in eomiectior with thl condition of that thoroughfare, and I have been waiting since for some member to explain that the Local JicKhes Act authorises the council to collect rates, but the spending is only implied and discretionary. Why should your former correspondent have complained? In wet weather the grownups can remain indoors and the children can always get to school across the paddocks. No further gone than sixty years ago our grandfathers, encased in gumboots and armed witJi a storm lamp, would have tackled Dives Avenue without trepidation—of course 1 realise that changes have taken place since then, but the council doesn't know It. However, as to the subject matter suggested in the caption. It is the ease that at the present ti^ie thousands of tourists are being attracted to France and Flanders to witness holes in the ground filled with water and stretches of mud; and here a± our very doors we have about as hopeless a landscape as they are likely to see. By putting a little vim into the business the council might be able to divert some of the aforementioned traffic; we have the goods (as. our American cousins remark), the travellers have the money, and the exchange ought to be mutually satisfactory. There need be no qualms, as keen observation has taught me that nothing on this earth equals the sublime simplicity of the tourist— except, perhaps, it be the gullibility of the Avenue ratepayers. It may be, possibly is, the case that the council" has another use for this stretch of roadway, such as on the occasions of Ministerial visits. These gentlemen, as a rule, do not care to stray too far from town, and one of the most telling arguments in favour of improving the lot of the backblocks settlers would be to motor the Ministers through the Avenue on a wet day. There they can experience the discomforts of the back country, with the inconvenience that it neither enjoys God's good sunshine during the daytime nor the beneficlent beams of the "milky way" at night. For the information of your correspondent I may state, I have been told on seemingly unimpeachable authority that before the end of the year one real electric lamp will pierce the darkness with a ray equal to about one candle-power per thousand square feet of road surface. Since light varies inversely as the square of the distance, and it will be filtered through the foliaae, we are hoping it won't be so blinding as the above calculation suggests, for it is almost certain that if any serious consequence results the council, will evade compensation by blaming it on the moon. —I am, etc., MUDLARK.